


Through This Wall

by partypaprika



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-16 05:46:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13047735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/partypaprika/pseuds/partypaprika
Summary: “Yeah, of course,” Poe says. “Anything that you need, buddy, just let me know.” He looks at Finn a little deeper, as if he’s peeling back the layers of Finn and Finn wants to put his arms in front of himself or make Poe look away, stop before he sees just what a coward Finn truly is.Or: the aftermath ofThe Last Jedi.





	Through This Wall

After a horrible forty-eight hours on the Millennium Falcon, they finally receive a response to their distress beacon. The former Captain Maru radios that he can take them in on Deltia. It’s almost laughable at that point—they’re barely one hundred people strong out of a force that once comprised millions of people across the galaxy. But, a port is a port, and they limp their way over to the Vya sytem.

Finn can’t bring himself to leave Rose’s side. She looks so helpless lying there, her breathing shallow. No one on board is a real medic, but BB-8 is able to come by after a series of emergency ship repairs to do a scan of her body. He beeps at Finn until Poe emerges out of somewhere to pass along BB-8’s comments.

“BB-8 says that she’s got a bad concussion, two broken ribs and a colon wound. There’s some internal bleeding and a risk of infection,” Poe says softly.

Finn clenches his jaw. “Can’t we do something? Anything?" Poe’s frown deepens and Finn can’t stop himself from kicking out at the nearest piece of ship. “I hate this stupid rust bucket,” Finn says loudly, kicking again, each bang echoing around them, until someone down the hall starts yelling at Finn to stop damaging the last remaining vessel of the resistance.

Poe doesn’t say anything, just comes to stand next to Finn and, embarrassingly, Finn begins to feel hot tears leaking out of the side of his eyes. Poe just reaches out and pulls Finn in for a hug, the singed smell of his uniform folding around Finn. Finn feels pathetically grateful for how warm and sturdy Poe is and they stay like that for a long time. When Finn finally steps back, there’s a blotchy damp spot on the worn leather of Poe’s jacket.

Later, Rey comes to see Finn as well and she doesn’t say much either, just sits next to Finn right on the floor, their backs pressed against the metal wall.

“From what I hear, she seems pretty amazing,” Rey says.

“Yeah, she, uh, is,” Finn says, the lump in his throat welling up. “She almost died trying to save me. She might still die. I’m not worth that.”

Rey doesn’t say anything in response to that—just reaches out her hand which Finn grabs as if he’s drowning. After a long while, Rey says softly, “You are worth that, by the way. We all are,” and then she leans her head against Finn’s shoulder and to all intents and purposes, falls straight asleep.

Finn must fall asleep as well, because when he next opens his eyes, Poe and BB-8 are standing in front of Rose. Rey snores softly in his ear.

“Shhh, we don’t want to wake the kids,” Poe says to BB-8, who correspondingly beeps quieter and says something that makes Poe give a tired little laugh. “Now’s not the time for that.”

Finn must make some kind of noise, because Poe flicks his eyes over to him and regards him for a long moment. There’s no other word for Poe but captivating and Finn thinks wildly to himself, _beautiful_ , and something deep inside his chest hurts. And then he thinks about Rose kissing him after saving his life and that hurts even worse, so Finn closes his eyes, BB-8 beeping at Poe until he finally shoos BB-8 out of the room.

Finn feels like a total coward, that same sense of failure as when Rose had first caught him trying to escape off the ship. That’s what is he after all—a failure of a stormtrooper and a failure of a rebel.

 

 

 

Finn wakes up again to Poe gently shaking his shoulder. After a groggy confused minute, Finn sits up and realizes that someone had found a big coat and laid it over him during the night, most likely Rey. She’s gone, probably waking up at the end of night watch like the crazy person that she is.

“Where’s Rey?” Finn says and Poe laughs and shakes his head wryly.

“You know, you could give a guy a complex,” he says. “But I promise that she’s here. She’s meeting with the General right now. Do you want me to take you to her?”

Finn starts to say yes and then looks over to see Rose, lying there, her skin paler than it was the day before. He swallows down the words. “No, I’m ok. I think I’ll just wait here.”

Poe nods, like he didn’t expect anything different. “But, uh, if you see her, ask her if she can come by when she gets the chance,” Finn says.

“Yeah, of course,” Poe says. “Anything that you need, buddy, just let me know.” He looks at Finn a little deeper, as if he’s peeling back the layers of Finn and Finn wants to put his arms in front of himself or make Poe look away, stop before he sees just what a coward Finn truly is.

“Just,” Finn starts and he doesn’t know the words, makes an aborted arm gesture instead. “Just, please…” and Poe steps in and pulls Finn close, folds him into another hug, which Finn hadn’t been asking for, but is better than anything Finn could have thought of. Prior to Poe’s earlier hug, no one had hugged Finn since they took him to be a stormtrooper.  

He’s not sure how long a hug is supposed to be, but Poe seems content to just stay, both of them pressed together, so Finn lets the now-familiar smell of singed leather and fuel ground him. It smells surprisingly good, and Finn has a wild thought of burying his face in Poe’s neck, of letting Poe’s smell wash over him, envelop him.

Finn lifts his head up, but doesn’t move back and Poe looks back steadily. Finn’s gripping the smooth leather of Poe’s jacket, his hands wanting to move up, to touch Poe’s face, feel the shadow starting to grow in on Poe’s jaw, but Rose is there, sleeping, dying. Rose who kissed Finn and saved his life, and Finn jerks back, looking at the ground.

Finn mumbles something and Poe nods and immediately leaves. “I’m sorry,” Finn says to Rose when he can’t keep it in any longer. Rose breathes out and in, the light catching on her necklace. Her necklace that she shared with her sister, who’s dead, who deserved to be alive and happy, instead of Finn.

 

 

Rey comes by an hour later, a good amount of food piled on a plate that she hands over to Finn, who proceeds to wolf it down. “Wow,” Rey says. “Didn’t you grab some food in the kitchen earlier?” Finn shakes his head and Rey’s eyes go wide with surprise. “Good thing that Poe gave that to me then, otherwise you might starve.”

Finn doesn’t say anything, but he does feel a prick of warmth in his chest at the thought of Poe making sure that Finn ate. Rey stays with Finn for a few hours, telling him about Luke and Ben Solo and the force. He can tell that she’s leaving things out. There’s something that’s too raw and painful for her to relive, so she skirts around it, the gaps coloring everything else. Finn can’t blame her, he has his own gaps: Rose’s kiss, the escape pod, all of his failures. So, he just holds Rey’s hand as she tells him about how much the protectors of the Jedi holy site hated her.

 

 

When they arrive on Deltia, Rose is immediately shuttled off to some medical facility, a series of droids and doctors all making loud noises over her and not allowing Finn to follow them. Finn watches them disappear from the hanger until Poe comes up next to him. Poe starts to reach out an arm to throw over Finn’s shoulder, but stops himself at the last second, instead parlaying it into an arm stretch. It’s not fooling anyone, but it makes Finn smile.

“Everyone’s grabbing any stuff that they had on the ship—Maru’s got quarters where we can set up temporarily while we regroup.” Finn doesn’t have anything except the clothes on his back—and at least one of those items is Poe’s.

Finn follows Poe through the complex, dark green walls surrounding them, making them feel like they’re in a jungle. They pass a number of people on the way—people dressed in calm, dark blues and greys—and each of them stares at Poe and Finn, at the picture they must present with their messy half-burned outfits, as they walk by. Poe smiles back at all of them, but Finn can barely bring himself to keep looking up. He wants to crawl into the nearest room and never come out. There’s Rose, Finn reminds himself, so he sets his jaw and keep moving forward.

 

 

They settle in on Deltia—Poe, Rey, General Organa and the remaining senior staff spend most of their days in meetings with Maru and his staff. Poe manages to charm the droids and doctors monitoring Rose into letting Finn be nearby. They’ve managed to repair the internal damage to Rose’s colon and ribs, but the trauma to Rose’s brain was too severe to adequately address.

“There’s a strong chance that Rose won’t wake-up,” a young doctor told Finn on the first day. She’s one of the more junior doctors on Maru’s staff, but she had also been the most patient with Finn and Finn had appreciated her honesty.

Rey and Poe had seemed to know that Finn was extra fragile that night, because they’d sat extra close to him at dinner, keeping up a running conversation about where they needed to visit next in order to start bringing together the scattered rebel forces.

After that, Poe and Rey start going on small missions—a few hours here and there. Finn deliberately avoids any of the resistance meetings, instead spending his days in Rose’s room, trying not to think about what’s next. He hears about the missions from the two of them and tries not to think about how worried he is every time that they leave. After one of her longer missions, Rey comes and sits with Finn the whole day, playing card games and talking about nothing in particular until Rey clears her throat.

“I’m going to the Brivowe system,” Rey says. Finn tries to wrack his brain about what’s there. He comes up with a complete blank.

“What’s there?” Finn asks.

“Training, apparently,” Rey says, and now Finn can hear the undercurrent of excitement in her voice. “Master Luke and Master Yoda said that that’s where they’ll train me.”

Finn squints at Rey. “Didn’t—Luke—isn’t he?”

Rey nods, unable to stop a smile from slipping across her face. “Yep. Master Luke.”

Finn can feel himself smiling as well—his first smile in days. Maybe weeks. “Master Luke, huh. That is some cool stuff right there.”

She gives Finn a big hug and makes him promise to eat more. Finn goes along with everyone else to watch her leave—just before she climbs into her ship, she runs back towards Finn and gives him another hug and whispers in his ear, “Stay strong.” Finn wants to laugh at the thought of him being strong, but then she’s gone before Finn can say anything in response. As the ship pulls out of the hanger, Finn feels something painful settle into his chest. He’s never had a sibling, but he imagines that this must be what it feels like to watch them leave.

General Organa is in the hanger as well and she eyes Finn speculatively as everyone shuffles out. General Organa is terrifying and _terrifying_ , and Finn may be more scared of Captain Phasma than General Organa, but it is a very close race. Holo finish. She looks like she’s going to approach him, but then Poe swoops in out of nowhere, his hand warm around Finn’s arm in a way that makes Finn shiver, dragging him off to the mess.

With Rey gone, Poe seems to have decided that he’ll have to make up for her absence. Poe tries to take Finn to whatever socializing is going on, but Finn feels like a fraud, and always skirts around the edges of the groups of people. He feels better when he’s near Rose anyways, doesn’t have to worry about what might happen if she wakes up and Finn’s not there for her. But at night, Finn lets Poe drag him away, finds himself sitting on Poe’s bed. He lets Poe try to teach him all the ways to cheat at cards, reveling in Poe’s attention. Sometimes, when Finn is very tired, he’ll let himself sit next to Poe, their sides pressed together, the awareness of Poe spreading over him like the sheer shock of plasma. Finn’s ashamed to say that that’s the best part of his day.

And that’s what Finn does for most of his days—he wakes up, lets Poe drag him to eat some food, heads to Rose’s bed, lets Poe drag him away at the end of the day, goes to sleep and then does it all over again. As the days pass by, Finn can see Poe wanting to ask about getting involved with the resistance, but he never does. Finn feels pathetically grateful for it. Keyword, pathetically.

 

 

About a month in, General Organa walks into Rose’s room. Finn freezes, absurdly hoping that if he doesn’t breathe, maybe she will ignore him, but she pulls up a chair and faces Finn.

“Finn,” General Organa starts. “What are you doing?”

“I’m, uh, waiting with Rose in case she wakes up,” Finn says.

General Organa gives a nod. “I’ve talked with the doctors. There’s a good chance that she won’t.”

Finn pushes down on the immediately instinctive anger that rises up. “But she might wake up,” he says firmly.

“Finn, what are you doing?” General Organa says, and this time it’s sterner, like she can see past everything and she knows just how scared and cowardly Finn is. At just how undeserving he is to be alive.

“I, uh, I don’t know,” Finn says.

General Organa just watches Finn for a few minutes. “Poe likes you a lot,” she says. When Finn opens his mouth to protest, she shuts him down with a firm look. “I’m sure you already knew that.” And she’s right, he did. “He likes you too much to push you. I do not have that luxury. We need every person that we can get, and your presence at Rose’s bedside helps no one. I can confidently say that Rose would not have wanted you to be here at the cost of all else.”

“She kissed me,” Finn blurts out, the words bypassing his brain completely. He stares at General Organa in horror, but she doesn’t seem surprised or annoyed at this revelation. “After she saved me. I didn’t understand—I was going to do the first brave thing I’d ever done, and she saved me. She said that she loved me. And then she kissed me and now she might die.”

General Organa nods at him, lets Finn’s story sink in. Eventually she says, “That’s a heavy burden. But I can tell you that love is a funny thing. We want the people that we love to be happy. Sometimes it’s being happy together, but sometimes it’s not. She wanted you to live. Maybe you’re right and this is exactly what she wanted you to do. But, something tells me that it isn’t.”

She stays there for a while in silence with Finn. Eventually she gets up, pressing one hand softly on top of Finn’s.

 

 

Finn makes himself scarce before dinner, leaving Rose’s room before Poe would normally arrive. He skips dinner too and hides out in Poe’s room. The look on Poe’s face when he walks into his room to find Finn there is almost worth it alone.

“Finn, where have you been?” Poe says and there’s humor in his voice, but also a note of fear. “I couldn’t find you anywhere.”

“I’m sorry, I just—I just needed time to think,” Finn says. “General Organa came to see me today.” Poe raises his eyebrows at that. “She said that it was time for me to start doing something other than watching Rose.”

“That sounds like her,” Poe says, his voice fond.

“She also said that you liked me too much,” Finn says, carefully watching Poe’s reaction. Poe laughs and gives a small, wry smile, but doesn’t deny it. It gives Finn a small piece of courage, so Finn takes a deep breath and steels himself.

“I’m going to formally join the resistance,” Finn says. “I should start pulling my weight.”

Poe starts to protest, but Finn keeps going. “I’m not brave like you,” Finn says. “But I care about you and Rey and Rose. Rose was right, that’s what the resistance is about.”

Poe comes to sit next to Finn on the bed—he keeps a bit of distance between them and looks at Finn. “Ok,” he says. “If that’s what you want.”

Finn gives Poe a half-smile. “It is. I’m not very good at being brave or being loyal. But I can fix pipes and sewage. I know some schematics. I can help.”

Poe throws his head back and laughs. “Finn, buddy, you are the most loyal person that I know. Although, the General is right. I do like you too much—I don’t want you to get hurt.”

Finn feels a happiness settle into his chest and he can’t stop himself from smiling wider. He reaches out for Poe’s hand and Poe lets Finn lift it and lace their fingers together. “Me either. I like not being hurt. But, it’s worth it, I think. And, I think you like me the perfect amount.”

Poe lifts an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

“Yes,” Finn says and then leans in.

Finn has little for experience, but Poe lets Finn dictate the pace of their kiss. It starts chastely, a press of Finn’s lips against Poe’s, and then Finn deepens the kiss, every part of his body wanting more, now. When they finally pull apart, both Finn and Poe are breathing heavily, and Poe gently maneuvers them down onto the bed.

They face each other like half-moons and Finn allows himself to close his eyes and shift closer, until there’s no space between them. “I like you too much too,” he says quietly into Poe’s skin and Poe holds Finn close until they both fall asleep.


End file.
